


No beast so fierce

by SecondStarOnTheLeft



Category: 15th Century CE RPF, Historical RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern, Business Rivalry, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, POV Female Character, Sibling Relationship, Sibling Rivalry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-29
Updated: 2016-08-29
Packaged: 2018-08-11 20:50:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7907242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Edmund dies, and Henry doesn’t come to the funeral.</p><p>Father’s furious, of course, but Father’s been furious for months now. Ever since they were told that it didn’t matter how much money they threw at Ed’s sickness, Father’s been constantly on the verge of boiling over.</p><p>This is a different kind of fury, though. This one has a purpose behind it.</p><p>(Or, modern wars are sometimes fought in boardrooms, not on battlefields, but are no less bloody for it.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	No beast so fierce

**Author's Note:**

> _ANNE: No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity._   
>  _RICHARD: But I know none, and therefore am no beast._
> 
>  
> 
> \-- Act I, Scene 2, _Richard III_ , William Shakespeare

Edmund dies, and Henry doesn’t come to the funeral. 

Father’s furious, of course, but Father’s been furious for months now. Ever since they were told that it didn’t matter how much money they threw at Ed’s sickness, Father’s been constantly on the verge of boiling over. 

This is a different kind of fury, though. This one has a purpose behind it.

Mother has been drugged to get her through the day, of course, but Mother’s been spending half her time drugged for months now. It’s been as though she were the one with terminal bone cancer, not Ed, as if she was the one who’d suffered losing her hair and health and life.

She has her precious George supporting her on one side though, when they arrive at the graveside, and poor, long-suffering Bess is under Mother’s other arm. Father and Ned and Uncle Richard are under the coffin, on the side Annie can see, and she doesn’t know who on the other. Richard Neville, probably, maybe some other friends of Mother’s or Father’s. Poor Ed’s friends have all been relegated to the general population, of course, but that’s always been the way in their family.

Dickon sniffles beside her, and Annie pulls him closer. He’s a tiny little thing, smaller by far than even George, but he rubs away any hint of tears and sets his jaw, clearly determined not to cry.

Meg, under Annie’s other arm, has no such qualms. Meg hero-worshipped Ed almost as much as Dickon does Ned, and she’s been distraught ever since he stopped getting out of bed. Months, now - longer even than Mother’s been self-medicating. 

It’s Father and Ned and Uncle Richard who line up to let Ed down, them and Richard Neville, which isn’t all that surprising - he’s probably a relative, some distant way through Mother, but not so close that they claim him. Annie doesn’t say a word, not even when they’re all called to pray, and she knows that Ed would understand.

Ed always understood. Whenever Mother forgot that Meg and Dickon existed, or Father decided that someone needed to play peacemaker between the four youngest, responsibility was always passed to Annie. Ned always ignored it, more or less, but Ed had always stepped in with a smile and a word for Bess, who felt like she never got ten minutes together of Mother’s time, and a tease for Dickon, who felt like everyone took him too seriously, and sometimes a frown for George, who felt like no one took him seriously enough. 

Meg had been his special pet, of course, had always been able to charm him into getting her way with Father or convincing him to play what games Dickon was too small for and George too big - Annie wasn’t sure how Meg would cope, without her white knight to ride to her rescue.

Annie isn’t sure how she’s going to cope, without Ed to bolster her when Mother and Father are… Well, Mother and Father. 

There’s a hymn being sung - something German, translated to English, Annie thinks, which is a shame because Ed always loved the old hymns in Latin.

 

* * *

“You’ll have to step up now, my darling,” Mother is saying, and Annie’s stomach turns just a little. Ed’s only been dead two weeks, and Mother’s already pushing for George to  _ step up. _ Has she no shame?

No, of course she doesn’t. Mother never has, especially not when it comes to George.

It doesn’t matter that he’s only eleven - Ed was seventeen, getting set to head for university in September, practically an adult even if he was a big soft-hearted child at the back of it. Ned  _ is _ a man, and doesn’t need Mother advocating for him, not when he’s been Father’s perfect matching shadow since he was twelve.

George, though. Mother never stops advocating for George, for whatever reason. Annie’s never understood why Mother favours George over any of them - particularly over Bess, who’s never committed any greater sin than desperately wanting Mother to love her. 

“You are to be a big boy now,” Mother goes on, and Annie can’t see around corners but she knows that George will be kneeling on the Persian rug at Mother’s feet, puffed up with pride and pure, outright conceit. “And you must always make sure that you get the seat at the table that you are entitled to, my darling.”

That word - Mother  _ loves _ the word  _ entitled. _ Her special boy is entitled to the whole world, or at least to the bits of it Ned doesn’t devour whole. Her daughters and other sons can fight among themselves for whatever George doesn’t gobble up in Ned’s wake, and be happy with it. 

“Let him get through his GCSEs first, Mother,” Annie says, making her presence known - Mother’s study is a huge wreck of a room, filled with ugly dark furniture and ugly dark artwork, to suit her ugly, dark heart. 

That’s unkind, even if it’s true, so Annie makes a note of it for confession next weekend.

“Oh, we know he’s more than capable of it all,” Mother says dismissively, and Gorgeous George is  _ glowingly  _ smug. “He’ll be marvellous, won’t you, darling?”

“I’ll certainly try, Mum,” George says, the only one of them who doesn’t call her  _ Mother. _ Even Dickon calls her Mother rather than Mum, and he’s only a baby. 

“What’s Georgie Porgie going to try?” Ned asks, coming in through the other door, from Father’s study rather than the library. “To take over the world?”

George’s glow dims somewhat, whenever Ned’s in the room. It doesn’t help that Ned’s the only one of them that seems to have inherited Father’s size - he’s all shoulders and legs, and Annie remembers him and Ed both well enough at George’s age to know that George isn’t shaping up the same. He has that bright red-gold hair, too, and bright eyes, and he’s always smiling. Everyone dims a little beside Ned, but no one seems to mind it quite so much as George does. 

“If you  _ must _ know,” George begins, pushing himself upright and turning to face off with Ned - which is hilarious, it is, because George comes up to Ned’s breastbone and has arms as thick as Ned’s fingers - and would probably have started a fight, had Father not walked in.

“I’ll not have you fighting,” Father says, eyeing George in that perplexed, annoyed way that he saves just for George and, when she’s throwing a tantrum, Meg. “We have to be more united than ever.”

Not just because they’ve just lost Ed - Annie’s reading Economics at Oxford, and she’s heard the rumours. Everyone knows that Henry anointed Father his heir apparent, before the nerves and - if yet more rumours are to be believed - the dementia set in. 

But Margaret, French Margaret, hates Father, and wants York Security to be absorbed by the greater Plantagenet Industries brand, so the only outstanding subsidiary would be Lancaster Defence. 

Which means that there’s a war coming, and Father only has Richard Neville on side. He has all of them, too, but Annie is the only one anywhere near ready to step in and he more or less ignores her - she’s already got job offers in the City, for when she finishes university, and given Father’s current behaviour, she’ll be accepting one. Only Ned matters, of the seven-

Of the  _ six _ of them. 

“Come with me, George,” Annie sighs, knowing that this is all going to go to pot if she doesn’t diffuse it. Mother will want Father to let George stay on for the grown-up conversation, Ned will laugh, and they’ll all start fighting. “Let’s see if the others would like some ice-cream, shall we?”

George eyes her warily - so much their mother’s son! - but comes along anyway. Mother’s poisoned George against the rest of them, because Ned’s too close to Father for her to influence and the rest of them are too close to Ned, but he seems to take less issue with Annie than he does the others. At least, he doesn’t seem to outright dislike her, the way he does Bess and Dickon.

“You mustn’t let Dickon eat all the chocolate,” George tells her as he leads her out the door and down the hall, to the playroom - it’s been in use for twenty years and more, and has seen more than a few changes, but the huge room across the way from the library, with all the windows and the skylights, will always be the playroom. Annie’s not spent more than twenty minutes a time in it since she left home for college, but she knows Ed often spent the evening there with the little ones, so perhaps…

“Tell you what, Georgie,” Annie says, ruffling his hair just as she knows will bother him and make him laugh. “You run ahead and tell the others that I’ll be back in fifteen minutes, and I’ll bring home a tub of chocolate ice-cream each for you and Dickon. How does that sound?”

George is already running by the time she’s finished speaking, and she can’t help but smile. When he isn’t with Mother, when he isn’t in Ned’s shadow, it’s much easier to see him as just a little boy who’s lost his big brother, with tyrannical parents and absent older siblings. 

 

* * *

Annie finds Harry waiting for her outside Ed’s month’s mind mass. 

Harry’s beautiful, he is, in his own way, his mouth maybe too full but balanced by that lovely strong jaw. Annie knows that his temper runs a little hot - but whose doesn’t, these days? Why, just yesterday, she and Ned had had to pull Dickon off George.

They’d laughed, afterwards, because Dickon had been utterly hysterical and had been battering poor George with a toy train, but in the moment, it had been terrifying. Dickon’s always been such a quiet little thing that it seems impossible that he might have such ferocity lurking behind those sad, dark eyes of his.

Harry doesn’t hide his temper overmuch - he’s got a bad reputation around college, gets a bit too aggressive on the rugby pitch, but Annie knows that it’s nothing, really. It’ll burn out, and if it doesn’t, well, she can just divorce him.

Not that anyone other than the two of them know that they’re engaged. Ed knew, but Ed’s gone, and Annie misses him more and more every day.

“I’ve come to see your father,” Harry says, and she realises that he’s polished his shoes, which is oddly darling. “About time we made this official, don’t you think?”

Annie’s only twenty-one, but she thinks that she’d like to be married before her next birthday, if Harry can talk Father around. He’s a Holland, perfectly acceptable as far as potential husbands go - and Annie’s always wanted a May wedding.

“Annie,” Bess whispers, pale and drawn as she has been all morning but twice as much now, with Harry cutting through the crowd to get to Father. “Is that Henry Holland? Exeter Communications Henry Holland?”

“It is,” Annie confirms, clutching at her elbows to keep from fidgeting when Ned saunters over, talking back over his shoulder to Uncle Richard. “He’s here to speak with Father.”

“Business, today?” Ned asks, his distaste plainly visible, and Annie almost laughs - she feels some of Dickon’s hysteria curdling in the back of her throat, and reaches out to seize Bess’ hand in a sudden fit of terror. What if Father says no?

“Pleasure, today,” she assures Ned, and nudges her shoulder to his arm. “He’s here to ask Father’s permission to marry me,  _ if  _ you must know.”

Ned and Bess both turn to her in something that might be horror, but which could just as easily be delight.

“God in Heaven, Annie,” Ned says, wrapping that big arm of his around her shoulders. “I never thought you had it in you - sneaking behind their backs like that! Terribly brave!”

Annie doesn’t feel brave very often - just practical, mostly - but hearing it from Ned, who has never given a single damn what the consequences of his actions might be, she feels it now. 

Brave Annie. There are worse things she could be, and she wishes Ed had lived to see it.


End file.
